Gary Johnson was born in Minot, N.D., but his family later moved to New Mexico. He attended college at the University of New Mexico and graduated in 1975. Johnson served two terms as a Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 through 2003.

While in office, he vetoed more than 750 bills, cut more than 1,200 government jobs without firing anyone and left the state with a budget surplus, according to his campaign website.

“I cut spending, I cut taxes, and I reduced the size of government," Johnson said in an email interview. "And I did so by standing firm, not being afraid to exercise common sense, and leading with a level of transparency that is sorely lacking in government today."

The result was the best job creation record of any candidate in this presidential election, Johnson said.

Johnson initially announced his candidacy for president in spring 2011 as part of the Republican Party, but he made the switch to Libertarian on Dec. 28.

“I spent several months learning first-hand that the elite national media and the Republican establishment were not prepared to hear a message of fiscal conservatism combined with tolerance and liberty for the individual,” Johnson said regarding the move.

He is on the Missouri ballot as a Republican, however.

Johnson’s plans if elected include spending cuts, dropping the corporate tax rate to zero to stimulate job creation, liberal immigration reform and balancing the budget by 2013.

He thinks the war on drugs is a waste and that legalizing marijuana will cut down on crime. According to his website, Johnson thinks that "by managing marijuana like alcohol and tobacco — regulating, taxing and enforcing its lawful use — America will be better off."

“I also feel very strongly that there are millions of Americans who share my belief that government needs to get out of our personal lives,” Johnson said. “From gay marriage to a woman's right to choose, government has no business making decisions that the individual is best equipped to make.”

Mitt Romney’s political career started in 2002 when he was elected governor of Massachusetts. During his term, he was praised for leading an economic recovery prompted by budget cuts and programs to boost business, according to a biography on his campaign website. He eliminated a $3 billion deficit.

He also established health care reforms that have created nearly universal coverage for Massachusetts residents. Although his plan has been called a model for the health care reforms adopted through the Affordable Care Act passed by the Obama administration, he has argued that his was a solution tailored to his state alone and that other states should be free to pursue their own reforms.

Romney has a business background. He earned dual degrees from the Harvard law and business schools. After graduating, he founded Bain Capital, which spawned or rebuilt businesses such as Staples and Bright Horizons, then returned to the consulting firm Bain and Co. to lead it out of financial crisis. He also is credited with salvaging the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics after a bid-rigging scandal and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which created security concerns.

“Having worked and created jobs in the real economy, I understand the policies we must pursue to make the United States the best place in the world to do business,” he wrote in a campaign blog post. He intends to increase trade, promote energy production and labor flexibility, and invest in “human capital.”

Romney also intends to repeal and replace Obama’s health care law and create a market-based system that he thinks will empower states and lead to lower health care costs.

Missouri’s 7th District U.S. Rep. Billy Long, a Republican, is among those endorsing Romney for president.

“Missouri voters — as well as voters across the country — are looking for someone who will reverse President Obama’s failed policies,” Long said in a blog post on Romney’s website. “Mitt Romney will get rid of Obamacare, stop our government’s out-of-control spending and — most important of all — create jobs for the American people,” Long said.

Romney is married and has five sons.

MICHAEL J. MEEHAN

St. Louis

Age: 57

Party affiliation: Republican

Michael Meehan would be the first to tell you he isn’t a politician.

“What irks me is when the politicians say ‘the American people,’ they don’t understand the American people,” Meehan said.

Meehan, a real estate broker living in south St. Louis County since 1993, felt the sting of the real estate collapse in 2007. He was angry, and he noticed the people around him were angry, too. Three years later he decided to do something about it by running for president.

He filed for the Missouri primary in October and secured his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot the following day. Financing himself, Meehan lived in New Hampshire for 62 days and talked to almost 100 people daily leading up to the primary.

Meehan doesn’t profess to be an expert on every pressing political issue. His plan if elected is simple and twofold.

“First, we need to eliminate retirement and benefits for all of Congress when they leave office," he said. "Second, I’d go around Congress and institute a Convention by the People to create a constitutional amendment that would balance the budget.”

Meehan also wants an upheaval of our current education system. He holds that education should be a local issue without state intervention. He also wants to flip what he says is a government misallocation of funding. In his view, the high salaries of administrators should be reinvested to pay for textbooks, desks, teacher salaries and “anything that’s in front of the student.”

Although registered as a Republican, Meehan recognizes the need for bipartisanship. He envisions a Cabinet full of people who “get things done,” no matter their political affiliation. He emphasized his status as a man of the people, not of the dominant paradigm.

Despite his passion and charisma as a “natural salesman,” Meehan tallied 51 votes in New Hampshire. Ever the optimist, Meehan is confident his message won’t fall on deaf ears in his home state.

“Let’s make the Show-Me State the We’ll-Show-You State,” Meehan said. “We could really shake up the political institution.”

When Missourians go to the polls Tuesday, Meehan wants them to remember one phrase.

“I’m the fourth name down on the ballot, right under Mitt Romney. Skip Mitt, check Mike.”

Keith Drummond is president and CEO of Iron Sky, a technology company that provides safety and surveillance systems to law enforcement agencies. He has little previous political experience and first landed on a GOP ballot in the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 10.

Drummond’s top three issues, according to his website, are jobs, the economy and national security.

“I am angry over many aspects of our federal government, but spending tops the list,” he said in an email interview.

Drummond would cut the budget to a level that “allows us to spend less than we take in.”

“I believe plans already introduced in Congress, such as the ‘One Cent Solution’ would be a great way to deal with our federal government’s spending crisis,” he said.

The One Cent Solution, according to its website, is a proposed plan for the federal government to cut one cent out of every dollar it spends for six years. Its aim is to reduce federal spending by $7.5 trillion over 10 years and to balance the budget by 2019.

If elected president, Drummond said, he would repeal President Barack Obama’s health care plan, cut corporate and personal taxes and change the U.S. mission in the Middle East primarily to air support and reconnaissance. He said he would also cut government regulations on businesses, maintain full support for Israel and build a wall along the entire Mexican border.

Richard John “Rick” Santorum is a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. His political career began in the early '80s, when he worked as an administrative assistant to a Pennsylvania state senator while attending the Dickinson School of Law. In 1991, after having worked as an attorney for several years in Pittsburgh, Santorum began the first of two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1994, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, in which he served two terms.

Santorum’s political views are deeply influenced by his Catholic faith, and his legislative record is staunchly conservative. As a senator, he was instrumental in the passage of the 2003 partial-birth abortion ban, which prohibits doctors from performing certain types of late-term abortions. He also has been strident in his opposition to the gay rights movement. In 2003, he received a great deal of attention when, in an interview with The Associated Press, he defended a Texas sodomy law on the grounds that a society’s well-being hinged on the government’s ability to limit people’s “wants and passions”

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery," Santorum said. "You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”

Santorum’s views have made him popular among the Republican Party’s social conservatives. On Jan. 16 it was announced that he had narrowly defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus, but his inability to connect with the party’s moderates was apparent in the New Hampshire primary, where Santorum placed fourth. He finished third in the South Carolina primary.

Santorum is the father of seven children (another died shortly after birth). He is also the author of “It Takes a Family,” a 2005 New York Times best-seller.

Ron Paul is an obstetrician who estimates that he has delivered more than 4,000 babies. A former flight surgeon in the Air Force and graduate of the Duke University School of Medicine, Paul has five children and 18 grandchildren. And in the mid-1970s, he decided to get a few things off his chest by running for public office.

Paul is a leading critic of American military involvement all over the world, continually asserting that current policies “provide incentive for more (enemies) to take up arms against us,” according to his website. Recently, he has taken on monetary and airport security policies; both have become hallmarks of his libertarian-leaning presidential campaign.

During 20 years in Congress representing Texas, Paul consistently voted to lower taxes and has advocated for a “dramatic reduction in the size of the federal government.” He opposes the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that legalized abortion and opposes recent congressional attempts to define marriage as only between a man and woman, thinking states should make those decisions.

Paul’s campaign promises largely mirror his record in Congress. If elected, he says he would:

Cut $1 trillion in federal spending and eliminate five Cabinet departments, including the Energy, Education and the Interior departments.

Stop foreign aid and end all wars.

Many see Paul as a fringe candidate, but his appeal to young voters is undeniable. In the South Carolina Republican primary, he received 31 percent of votes from those younger than 30. During a rally in New Hampshire earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the youthful crowd’s most emphatic response came when Paul declared, “… we are dangerous to the status quo!”

Although Newt Gingrich does not appear on Tuesday's primary ballot, he does intend to compete in the Missouri caucuses that begin in March.

Gingrich was raised in a small town in Pennsylvania and carries with him several decades of political experience. Gingrich represented Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives for 20 years, gaining clout in 1989 when he was appointed minority whip and again in 1995 when he became speaker of the House in the first Republican Congress since 1954. As figurehead of the so-called Republican revolution, he was named Time's "Man of the Year" for 1995.

During his congressional tenure, Gingrich facilitated the creation and subsequent passing of a balanced budget that led to the reimbursement of more than $400 billion in national debt. He hopes to recreate the economic success he saw as speaker of the House by implementing a "pro-growth" strategy.

"Creating jobs and getting back to 4 percent unemployment is the most important step to a balanced budget," Gingrich said on his website. Steps to achieve this growth include putting a stop to proposed tax increases, bolstering the dollar by curtailing inflation and promoting transparency, creating a balanced budget and re-evaluating entitlement programs based on public feedback.

Gingrich also says he has championed health care with overhauls of Medicare and the Food and Drug Administration that directed the market's focus to people, prevention and innovation. He now advocates a "Patient Power" plan that would make health insurance more accessible and tax deductible, personalize Medicaid and Medicare and create a high-risk pool in each state to cover those unable to buy insurance.

With an economic background as CEO of Godfather's Pizza and a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City at both its Omaha, Neb., and Kansas City branches, Georgia businessman Herman Cain based his campaign on reviving the national economy with the 9-9-9 plan. It called for a 9 percent business flat tax, a 9 percent individual flat tax and a 9 percent national sales tax. Amid accusations of sexual misconduct and lackluster polling, he announced in December that he would suspend his bid for the Republican candidacy.

Jon Huntsman was governor of Utah from 2005 to 2009 and served as U.S. ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011. He rode a wave of high expectations into the primary season, campaigning on a platform of restoring public trust, economic prosperity and national security. Following a third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, however, he withdrew his bid and endorsed Romney.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry ran a campaign centered on job creation and fiscal responsibility. He called for a national flat tax of 20 percent. His bid was swathed in controversy, though, as he made repeated gaffes in Republican debates and on the campaign trail. He suspended his candidacy after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses and receiving less than 1 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. He withdrew from the race in January, casting his lot with Gingrich.

The buzz around Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's bid for the Republican nomination was high after her public criticisms of Obama. After showing early promise in the Iowa straw poll, though, Bachmann came in a disappointing sixth in the same state’s caucuses. She campaigned on what her website calls her "constitutional conservative" principles of economic restoration, protection of marriage and spending cuts but suspended her candidacy in January.